Abstract
Expectoration of blood may be caused by many disorders. In some instances thorough investigation fails to disclose the cause of this symptom and the patient may be said to have idiopathic hemoptysis. Several authors 1 have suggested that hemoptysis in the absence of demonstrable causative disease may be due to ulceration of the mucosa of small bronchi. Other possibilities have been suggested: namely, small pulmonary infarctions; vicarious menstruation; blood dyscrasias; and systemic and pulmonary hypertension. The frequency of idiopathic hemoptysis as reported in the literature varies considerably, depending on the method of selection of cases and the thoroughness of their study. Chaves 2 studied a group of 325 patients who had had hemoptysis less than three months before they were examined in a New York City chest clinic; 189, or 58.1%, of these had no objective evidence of thoracic disease at the time of examination. Jackson and Diamond 1a reported
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